The most recent American Cancer Society estimates in U.S. men show nearly 2,200 new cases of invasive breast cancer in men this year. More than 400 men will die from the disease.

Missy Burkett is the breast nurse specialist at the Breast Health Center at Athens Regional Medical Center and said in her career she personally has only worked with one man diagnosed with breast cancer.

“The man had a palpable breast mass, or lump, and went to his doctor, who said he needed a mammogram and an ultrasound,” she said. “This patient had a biopsy done that came back as cancer, and his initial reaction was surprise; eyes-wide-big surprised. He wasn’t expecting a diagnosis of breast cancer because he thought that just happened to women.”

Once he knew the problem, he went into “let’s fix it” mode and told the doctors to do what they needed to do to get rid of it, Burkett said.

“He had a great attitude. He didn’t go into shock,” she recalled. “Some men will go into major shock and will go through the same emotions that women do, but the shock a man would go through is always more severe than a woman’s because women always know there’s the possibility they could get breast cancer.”

The man Burkett worked with did very well in his treatment and currently is living his normal life.

Breast cancer is 100 times less common among men than women.

For men, the lifetime risk of getting breast cancer is about one in 1,000.

The number of breast cancer cases in men relative to the population has been fairly stable during the last 30 years.

Ashley Woodall, breast health educator at St. Mary’s Health Care System, has helped two male patients diagnosed with breast cancer in her career.

“The male breast cancer patients I have worked with have seemed to have a sense of embarrassment,” she said. “There also is much disappointment and slight anger.”

To help her patients, Woodall offered as much emotional support as possible and tried not to make them feel different just because they were men.

“I was able to follow them through the whole process from imaging to biopsy, to diagnosis, to surgical referral, to the day of surgery and beyond,” she said. “I offered them a manual on breast cancer in men, and on the day of surgery, I presented each male patient with a breast cancer bag, which included information, breast cancer magnets, pens, lapel pins, chapstick, a massage and a masculine breast cancer survivor comfort pillow. I called to check on the patients after surgery and gave them my contact information in case they needed any support in the future.”

Men typically discover they have breast cancer after they find a lump or have breast swelling or nipple discharge, nipple inversion, sores on their nipple or the areola (the darker colored ring around the nipple), soreness or enlarged lymph nodes under the arm.

“When men experience any of these (symptoms), it’s important that they go to the doctor right away to have it evaluated, but there are a lot of men that don’t understand that breast cancer can occur in men and will ignore the symptoms,” Burkett said. “The longer they ignore it, the further the cancer will progress.”

Usually by the time men go to the doctor to have a lump checked, their cancer is at a more advanced stage than would be found in a woman, who are more apt to immediately see a doctor.

“It’s not masculine to have breast cancer, and they feel like it’s not macho to have something going on with their breasts,” Burkett said. “What they need to realize is that they don’t need to be macho about this. If you have a problem or find something new in your breast, you need to admit it and go see a doctor and have an examination.”

The main difference between breast cancer in men and women is that men usually develop ductal carcinoma, a cancer that forms inside a milk duct.

The cancer treatments for men and women are similar, but when it comes to the surgery, women often have the option of having a lumpectomy.

Doctors typically perform a modified radical mastectomy on a man to remove all of the breast tissue and the nipple, but leave the chest wall muscle.

Woodall and Burkett suggest that men do self breast exams, especially if they have a history of breast cancer in their family.

If the only relatives affected by breast cancer were women, men still need to take the threat of breast cancer seriously.